The FCA has published a thematic review on how firms deal with complaints and providing recommendations on how the process can be improved.

The review entailed assessing the complaints handling systems at 15 major firms, identifying areas for improvement and discussing the findings at an FCA-chaired working group. The FCA found that some firms have already made improvements towards handling complaints more fairly and putting the interests of customers first, namely senior management is more involved with complaint handling and staff are encouraged to have empathy with customers. The review identified a number of areas in which firms still need to improve. For example, there are often inconsistencies in the amount of redress offered to customers and firms do not always seek to establish the root cause of a customer’s complaint. Recommendations from the working group include:

• calls to a firm’s complaints telephone number should not exceed the basic call rate;
• an extension of the next business day rule to ensure that firms have an adequate amount of time to consider and resolve complaints;
• abolishing the non-reportable complaints rule, under Dispute Resolution: Complaints sourcebook (DISP) 1.5, to ensure that all complaints have to be reported to the FCA. In light of this recommendation, the FCA are considering changes to the DISP rules;
• reviewing the bi-annual complaints return to include more consumer focused measures; and
• changing the FCA publication of firms’ complaints data.

The FCA is considering these recommendations and is expected to consult on potential policy changes in due course.

Copies of the:

Thematic review; http://bit.ly/1BM1CCK

Press release; http://bit.ly/1vhi23i

Webpage; http://bit.ly/1uxw8eS